BleepingComputer.com: My Computer Is Sort Of Dying....

My computer is completely finished I think. Well, it's still useable, but bleh. It's really hot right now so my comp was overheating. I have to buy a laptop, but I dont want to rush into it because I still dont know what to get. I asked about my overheating problem which is as such: It overheats in hot weather and has been doing so for a really really long time. I think the second summer I had it, it was really hot and I smelled a smokey smell one time, so I started putting bags of ice on top of my computer until the heat wave was over (I know I'm hella hi tech). If the weather gets too hot, it just overheats when I'm doing stuff like browsing el internet. If it's cooler weather, like it almost always is where I am, it only overheats if I do certain tasks, such as running a game like WCIII or running an SNES emulator on hi speeds. It has never had issues with PS emulators.

BTW, by overheating I mean it just shuts off. Sometimes it shuts off and then restarts immediately by itself, and other times it shuts off and doesnt turn on again. I found out a while ago that when it does this it wont turn on again at all until I switch off the power switch in the back for a while, and then try again. The first time this happened I had someone coming to fix it because it wouldnt turn on for days until I tried messing with the power switch in the back.

So anyway, this guy at best guy reccomended something that no one else had ever reccomended before. By the way before I say anything else, my computer has 3 fans installed and I put in a 4th one recently. Fans arent the problem. I asked this guy about liquid cooling system and he reccomended I replace the thermal compound. He told me where to buy some, showed me where and how to put it on, so I did it. It didnt seem to difficult, I made sure to make the layer as thin as I could by using the flat side of a plastic pencil lead holder. It seemed to help at first, but during the day when it's warmer, my computer still shuts off when I do certain things like watching youtube videos.

Anything else I can do? Oh, and I have had the side panels of the computer taken off for a long time and I have a large fan running through it constantly. Annnd... I have had this computer for a little over 3 years, and I got it from ibuypower.com, because I used to use my PC for gaming.

your power supply is kicking off, that's from heat and being dirty, blow out the case from every angle, especially the power supply, don't quit until every spek of dust is gone

I use the fan blowing into the open side myself when the room temperature gets too hot

Hmm, I forgot to add something. After my computer had been sitting in my dorm without use for about a month my freshman year.... so a little more than a year and a half ago, I came back, tried to turn my computer on, and heard a pop, and then saw and smelled some smoke. I was told it was either the motherboard or the power supply, but that it was worth trying to replace the power supply. So I bought a new one, I think the cheapest one because I wasnt sure if it would fix my comp, and I basicaly took a shot in the dark at installing it myself. I took out the old power supply and pretty much just matched up the cables with the same number of prongs to put in the new one. It worked, and I've had that supply ever since.

Now to be honest I dont even remember if this overheating problem was an issue before I replaced the power supply. I want to say that it was a problem beforehand, but I just cant remember at this point. But given everything else I've said, now that you point it out it would make tons of sense for it to be the power supply. So much that I want to kick myself for not even thinking of it being the problem.

Oh, and also, last year I dusted out my entire computer for the first time in like.... well, I had never dusted it off before. There were dust layers caked on some of the fans and whatnot, and right away the overheating problems basically vanished completely... for the time being.

So anyway, should I just invest in a more expensive power supply?

Thanks for the reply

if the heat is ok and the dust is removed and it still throws the overload protection on the power supply, I would try another power supply, but first I would rule out any sticky fans or drives overloading the voltage rails

This post has been edited by DaChew: 03 September 2007 - 07:02 PM

DaChew, on Sep 3 2007, 07:01 PM, said:

You kind of lost me here. The 'case temp' according to the screen below the disc drives read anywhere from 21-28 degrees C depending on the time of day right now.

For sticky fans, am I just checking if they are spinning smoothly?

Getting the dust out, I didnt have much compressed air left, but I can buy more easily. Am I taking the power supply out completely or just blowing air through the grid in the back?

"drives overloading the voltage rails" is where you completely lost me

fans with bad bearings or dirty blades draw down the voltage available from the power supply(voltage rails)

unfortunately canned compressed air is not up to the task of cleaning a very dirty computer or power supply


you have to have the side off when you boot the computer up to see what's happening

To clean a real nasty computer, I take it outside and have even used a leaf blower(stand way back) and make sure you don't blow it over

for my own and clients I use an air compressor with jet nozzle, it's something that you get better at over the years

you have to watch out for blowing dust under the heat sink on graphics cards tho or into open pci or memory slots

On a side note unless your using a freon based cooling system or TEC ( thermo electric cooling AKA peltier) you can only cool the computer as low as the ambient temperature. So if its 100 degrees in the room the lowest temperature the computer can get is 100 degrees no matter how many fans you have. No AC in a dorm room I am sure it gets pretty hot

This post has been edited by Sneakycyber: 04 September 2007 - 03:42 PM

K so I just replaced the power supply. It's the same brand and wattage as the old one which I didnt realize, but it was 100$, so it's not like cheapness is the problem right? Advantec 430 watt by the way.

It was basically the same except the old one had slightly different cables that confused me. They both have 3 cables that plug into the comp, and one of the cables leads to a big plug (I dont know the correct term, but they seem to function like plugs). That was the same on both power supplies and easy to deal with.

But the old power suppy had one cable that went --------(plug)-------(plug)-------(plug)------(small plug) and one that was just 2 plugs and then a smaller plug. The new one, however, had 2 cables with 3 plugs and then a smaller one, so I wasnt really sure how to set it up. I hope I didnt do anything stupid and ruin my comp. I just skipped the 3rd plug on one of the cables. Not sure if that made any sense at all, but I thought I'd try.


Aaaaanyways, the computer still overheated shortly after I turned it on. Granted, it has been 94 degrees today, but no one else has been complaining about the heat screwing with their computer.

So that's it really. I'm lost for ideas. The 2 remaining possibilities are that 1) I screwed up with the installation of both power supplies, or 2) I need to buy a super super super expensive power supply. 1 is possible I guess but I wouldnt know unless I paid best buy "only" 40$ for them to install the power supply and it probably wont make any difference at all, and I seriously doubt spending more than 100 dollars on a power supply will fix this issue.

On the plus side, it will soon become very cold and it will stay very cold for at least 6 months, and it is likely that my computer will stop overheating. However that doesnt really solve the problem, because even when it is cold my computer still overheats during certain tasks.

So is that the end? Is my comp just dead? Is there anything at all I havent done that might help? Is there any way to know what it is that is screwing up?

Guess I'm returning the power supply sometime in the next 2 weeks.

http://www.advantech.com/products/Model_De...amp;BU=&PD=

these are industrial power supplies, you stated earlier that you had a cheap one?

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

here's a program that will monitor your temperatures(see the sensor part)

the quick report would be usefull, try to get the temps right before you would expect a problem and with that fan blowing into it

This post has been edited by DaChew: 11 September 2007 - 08:57 AM

When I said cheap I just meant the cheapest I could get at bestbuy, there are cheaper ones out there. Weird since they are the same power supply but I dont think I could have spent 100$ on the power supply 2 years ago because I remember thinking "this might not even fix it, I'd better buy a cheap one just to check"

So I just put back in my old power supply and it's actually doing better so far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong in connecting the power supply?

I downloaded everest but I dont know of any quick report option, just a whole lot of text from a hardware report

Is the heatsink firmly mounted? They can sometimes become loose or even break
Mark

I had to take the heat sink off to take off and reapply thermal compound I put it back on and screwed it in firmly. Since according to wikipedia and what I saw, the heat sink is just a specially shaped piece of metal, I'm not sure what you mean by break.

Not the heatsink itself, but the mounting bracket, but I assume it's OK
Mark

open everest, open computer

click sensor

at the top under report/quick report sensor/plain text

Quote

this is at idle in a cool room

under overclock this is also useful for identifying your components

Quote

--------[ Sensor ]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sensor Properties:
Sensor Type Asus ASB100 Bach (SMBus 2Dh)
Motherboard Name Asus A7N8X-E

Temperatures:
Motherboard 20 °C (68 °F)
CPU 54 °C (129 °F)
WDC WD1600BB-98DWA0 28 °C (82 °F)

Cooling Fans:
CPU 2678 RPM
Chassis 2986 RPM

Voltage Values:
CPU Core 1.68 V
+3.3 V 3.31 V
+5 V 4.97 V
+12 V 12.03 V
-12 V -11.95 V
-5 V -4.53 V
Debug Info F 7E 71 FF
Debug Info T 54 20 124
Debug Info V 69 69 CE B8 BC BC BC (01)